


Lost in Japan, A Remix

by gettinyinggywithit



Category: Samurai Champloo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 07:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26349682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gettinyinggywithit/pseuds/gettinyinggywithit
Summary: A pirate and a ronin walk into a young girl’s teahouse… sounds like the start of a bad joke.[Collection of in-series drabbles, one for each episode; includes in-between moments, exchanging looks, midnight conversations, unreliable narrators, episode fix-its, some Fuugen of course, and plenty of self-indulgent little scraps]
Comments: 16
Kudos: 26





	1. TRACK 01. NEVER DROWN

**Author's Note:**

> Mixing SC drabbles + songfics. First up: Chance the Rapper's "Finish Line / Never Drown" for episode 1, Tempestuous Temperaments.
> 
> This work is also totally and completely unedited and spontaneous and for fun. I'll be watching the episodes and then trying to write the drabble in one sitting. So if there are little mistakes and inconsistencies, please forgive me.

_The water may be deeper than it’s ever been_

_Never drown_

Later, they each claim that they're the one who started this journey which changes all their lives: Mugen says that his deal to help Fuu in exchange for one hundred dumplings was the cause of their troubles; Jin counters that his slaying of the regional magistrate had actually started it all; and Fuu would whistle a tune and smile secretly, saying, “You’re both wrong - if I wasn’t there with the coin toss, then it wouldn’t have happened.” To which Mugen would holler, “Yeah, right! I’m the one who tossed it—so it was all on me!”

Truth be told, his blood still boils when he thinks on it, how close he’d been to absolute freedom, to the power to walk away from her and Jin. If only, if _only_ he’d called tails instead, if _only_ he’d caught the coin in midair instead of letting it land on her very unlucky forehead, then perhaps, perhaps—

Who makes the decision, really, that a particularly unspecial weekday, a hot, dry day in a podunk town, should be the day that everything changes?

//

When Mugen wakes up that morning, he doesn’t feel particularly special. There is no change in the wind, no feeling of apprehension that his world might suddenly be turned upside down. He scratches his belly and yawns, shoves his geta onto his feet, and slinks into town, grumpy, hungry, and spoiling for a fight. The same as everyday before that. The same, he thinks, as everyday will be after that. He isn’t daunted by the prospect of tomorrow, or the day after, and the day after, following in this same uninteresting way; the absolute boredom of it is familiar, not unlike the days on the island spent staring up at stars more numerous than grains of sand on the beach. Something will change eventually, he is sure of it, but it isn’t something you seek out. The key is not to hesitate when the moment comes. So when he sniffs out a bratty teenager playing Big Boss in a local teahouse, he steps inside without a second thought.

//

Jin, across town, hides in the shadows and hugs the side streets. His one goal is to go unnoticed. There is a finality, a resignation to the way this man moves, slow and solemn, a funeral procession. He still calls himself, when asked, a wandering samurai, but these days Jin feels he is just wandering straight into his grave. What's the line between _wandering_ and _fleeing_ anyway? Jin quiets the questions through hours of meditation, focuses on the rumbling of his stomach and the chill of the night—never, never the questions. And yet. There comes the day when, in a dusty road the local magistrate threatens an old man in the street, and Jin feels his hackles rise. A curious thing, the rousing of a dead man. He hasn’t stepped into the sunlight in days, perhaps weeks, and his voice is dry and rusty from disuse. He keeps his chin tucked into his neck, carefully looking out under the brim of his hat. A man standing nearby cautions him with a few words, “Don’t,” and it’s the fear in his voice that makes the decision for Jin.

//

Somewhere between, there is a girl in a pink kimono, rushing from one table to the next, sweat on her brow and tea spilling onto her toes. She huffs as a big hand reaches for her and she scoots out of the way, glaring in a way that makes the man leer. Someone else is complaining that their dumplings aren’t ready, and someone else is calling her an idiot across the room. Fuu’s been here for a few months already, an unbelievably long time. Once, she stood in a field of sunflowers and watched a large kimono retreating into the distance. Once, she kept vigil over her mother in a bed in a house far, far away. Fuu still sees the bed, the windows, the shadows in her dreams, but when she’s running around madly like this, calling orders and wiping down tables, she can forget.

So she throws her all in, pinning her cheeks high up on her face in a smile, and turns as another customer crosses the threshold. His hair is pointing in all directions, and the sunlight on his bright blue earrings seems to send a gust of salty, sea air into her face; can she hear the call of the gulls? The man doesn't smile, in fact he barely glances at her, but there’s something here, she knows it so powerfully it feels like religion, there’s _something_ —

Lightning strikes twice, apparently: another man enters, taller, with limbs like white birch trees in winter and a severity in his brow that Fuu immediately finds handsome. The man from the sea is just as entranced—he leaps and blades clash, like two bolts of lightning in the night sky. Watching them, Fuu’s heart is pounding harder than it ever has before; there’s something here, there’s something—perhaps this could change her life.

//

When all is set and done, and they’re standing on a three-way road with the sun on their backs, Fuu finally gives away the secret that’s been tucked in the corner of her mouth for months.

“The coin toss, it was heads,” she says, teasingly, her eyes bright, “see ya!” She marches away, her skinny, pink-clad shoulders shaking with laughter.

Mugen and Jin exchange glances, smiles peeling across their faces.

“What did we even go on this journey for?” 

Her laugh, still close enough to catch on the wind, is an answer. 


	2. TRACK 02. SING ABOUT ME

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next installment: King Kendrick Lamar's "Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst" for Episode 2, Redeye Reprisal.

_When the lights shut off, and it’s my turn to settle down_

_My main concern_

_Promise that you will sing about me_

_Promise that you will sing about me_

It’s the first time a man dies for her, and Fuu swears it’ll be the last. A man as big as a mountain, with a face full of burn scars and broken bones, a voice deep but small as a child’s. His body collapses against the stony creek bed, hard enough to shake the teeth in her mouth. He says quietly, “You were not afraid of me. I am not alone,” and the simplicity of this statement, the sincerity of his desire, it grips her so tightly she cannot breathe and she cannot weep. Fuu sits above him and stares down at his big face, the full lips and the jagged teeth, the sparse eyebrows and the thick jowls; she wonders how old he is, how many years he spent in his cage. What did the one-armed man call him? She can’t even recall his name — and now who would remember? In the village they will call him the _ogre_ , and in the months to come when they retell the story of his death, they will call her the _ogre tamer_. 

Slowly, his breath deepens and evens out, till he becomes entirely still. Fuu does not get up from her place.

“Why?” she asks, over and over, quietly, into the night. The fireflies, dancing and swirling, carelessly in love, do not answer; they cannot hear. 

//

The crying sets in later, and it lasts for days. It’s not constant; in fact most of the time she is not thinking about it. But then the sun will set over the trees, or she’ll trip, again, over a stone in the road, or she’ll toss and turn in her bedroll and huff and sigh, and her little shoulders will start to shake and then she’s sobbing, her teeth in her sleeve, a hand over her eyes. In the mornings, her body feels weak from grief. Her eyes are puffy and red. Jin looks respectfully away and does not ask, but Mugen steps closer and peers into her face.

“Y’better not slow us down today,” he warns, voice rough. 

Fuu swallows painfully, meeting his eyes, which are narrowed and glinting, sharp as blades. The memory of Mugen’s sword through the giant’s gut cuts through her, and she steps physically away. She nods.

A look of recognition passes over Mugen’s face, but it’s so fast, she’s not sure what he’s recognizing. Then he turns away and they start down the road.

When they make camp, Fuu curls into her bedroll first, but it’s no good: in her dreams, fireflies illuminate a craggy face in the darkness, with eyes deep as wells. He smiles but it’s desperate and sad. “I’m not alone,” he’d told her, and surely now he’s not — he’s invading her dreams every night, following her with his massive footsteps, an entire forest after her. Fuu wakes with a cry, panting. She glances around. Jin is turned away from her near the trees, and Mugen is on the edge of camp, splayed out half out of his cot. Deep night is lifting her veil; the sky is a velvet grey with a hint of lavender, and there’s dew in the grass.

She unfurls and moves toward the narrow creek, splashes water into her face. She heaves a sigh and sits by the water for a few moments, trying not to think. These days she wishes she had learned to meditate, like her mother had always told her to. No such luck; Fuu’s never been able to entirely escape her own mind, except in the bustling activity of a tea shop. 

_The tea shop_ — the crazed, pale face of the one-armed man rises, unbidden. He stands in fire, a grin on his whiskered lips; he stands with his heel on Mugen’s neck; he lies limp and cold on the ground. She shivers. A tear slips free, and she hastily wipes at her face.

“Fuck, are you _still_ crying?” Mugen lazily drawls. 

Fuu jumps, startled. “Mugen!”

He rolls over and faces her from his bedroll, scratching his belly and smacking his lips. His eyes are half open, like he’s still trying to blink awake. She regards him quietly for a moment, as he shakes off sleep. Mugen pulls himself to a sitting position, then stretches and yawns again, the picture of complete rest, entirely unperturbed. It’s been over a month on the road now, and he’s every bit the uncowed scoundrel she first laid eyes on. Fuu can’t imagine his inner peace. 

She starts, “That man…” A pause. She looks away. “He died, to protect me.” Her eyes close hard; she breathes in all the water in her body, wills it still. 

“Man? He was more monster,” he grumbles, fingering an ear. 

A prick runs through her at his words, but this time it’s not grief — it’s sudden, immense rage. Fuu launches herself toward Mugen with tears in her eyes and raises her hand to slap him hard across the face. But Mugen is faster — he snatches her wrist from the air, gripping her hard enough to hurt. His eyes are alert, narrowed, just as that morning when he scolded her. She hisses, but doesn’t drop her eyes. 

“Don’t say that about him,” she says quietly. “Don’t ever say that.” 

Mugen’s face doesn’t change from its deep frown. “People die all the time, girlie,” he says lowly. “They die in gutters, in prisons, in brothels. They die in battle, they die of sickness, they die before they’re even born.” There’s an edge to his voice, suddenly. “They die alone, covered in shit and piss, covered in dirt and ash, covered in their own blood and guts. Rich and poor, emperor and commoner, brothel gals and famous samurai. There is no good way to die, and everyone does it, _everyone_ , _all the time_.” He doesn’t release her hand, and it hurts. “And if we’re going to keep going on this crazy journey of yours—”

“I _know_ ,” Fuu replies, a little wildly. She pulls at her hand in Mugen’s grip. She’s thinking of the two dead bodies by the creek, but even more: she’s thinking of Mugen limping into camp that night, still sweating and vomiting from the poisoned mushrooms; she’s thinking of the bed in the room far, far away, the bed where a woman had once lay dreaming and then lay dying, smaller and smaller everyday till one day she was dust— 

“I know people die all the time, I _know_ —” 

Mugen cuts in, a twist in her gut: “—If you _know_ that, then you can’t turn into a puddle every time you see it.” 

Now Fuu hardens her expression to match his own. The tears are running freely in twin rivulets down her face; let the bastard see! “Am I supposed to be like you?” she spits. “Cool and aloof? Never caring about anyone else but me?” She rips her hand away, and this time he lets her. “I’d rather be a puddle.”

Mugen’s face changes, comes apart at the seams. His eyes settle on her face, blanker than she’s ever seen. “I saved you,” he reminds her, his voice so quiet she can barely hear it. “I saved you so you can find that sunflower guy.” 

Before she can entirely absorb his words, Mugen stands and moves away from her. He strolls over to Jin’s bedroll and kicks him awake, shouting about being hungry.

//

In the first village they come to, Fuu buys incense and burns it in the forest. She goes quietly, alone at dusk in the trees. She lays out a tray of fruit and pours sake over the earth, then touches her forehead three times before the makeshift altar. She thinks, _If I cannot carry it with me, like Mugen says, I must have a place to lay it down._

When she returns to their lodgings, Mugen and Jin exchange glances but she pretends not to notice. After a few moments of shuffling around the room, however, Mugen throws a bundle of cloth at her. 

“Go take a bath, girlie, you smell like a funeral,” he grumps, before rolling over in his bedroll and dropping to immediate sleep. 

She sleeps through the night for the first time in weeks.


	3. TRACK 03. RICH FRIENDS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double feature tonight! For episodes 3-4, "Hellhounds for Hire" part 1 and 2. For Part 1, "Rich Friends" by Portugal. The Man and focusing on our very dear Jin. 
> 
> Jin's character is very difficult for me to dig out, but I want to practice working with him more because I truly do love him.

_I’m just tryna catch a free ride from the temple to the tomb_

_I could really really really use a rich, rich friend like you_

“They call him Heitaro the Buddha,” the old man says, leaning on his good leg. 

Outside, the crickets are chirping so loudly that he actually has to shout over them. The sunlight beats on Jin’s back through the doorway, and his stomach gives another rumble of appeal. Still, Jin levels a careful gaze at him, refusing to watch the steam waft off his bowl of soup.

He goes on: “He’s technically yakuza, but in fact he’s a very kind hearted man.” 

Jin suppresses the urge to sigh; how many times has he heard this story? The kind hearted yakuza boss, the courtesan with a heart of gold, the aging gentry man who must protect the dowry of his daughters. He glances away from the grandpa for just a moment. The courtesan with a heart of gold turns out to be a madame who tricks other young girls into the trade. The aging gentry man steals his neighbor’s lands. This kind hearted yakuza boss will be the same.

They are all the same; not a leader of men among them. _There is no master here to serve._

The old man seems to have noticed Jin’s discomfort. His face, etched in wrinkles, slides into a smile, then he winks. “I see you are a swordsman for hire. If you want to make quick cash, go get yourself hired by the Nagatomi gang, they’ve got plenty of it.”

Conveniently, a handful of Nagatomi swordsmen stroll into the pub and seat themselves. The old man rushes over, his twinkling grin immediately giving way to abject fear. The effect is whiplash-inducing; Jin rolls his neck restlessly. 

They’re a typical yakuza group: loud, monstrous, big grins and and hands always straying to their swords, itching to cut something. Jin’s seen it a million times before, in a million different places. _There’s nothing different here, nothing new in this town_. The next several hungry hours loom over him, and for a moment he almost regrets ditching Fuu. But that thought doesn’t last long — a boy rushes into the pub and in a tone that reminds him very much of his erstwhile companion, demands an IOU from the jumpy yakuza members. 

Jin closes his eyes, tries not to hear the sounds of the boy leaping in fright, his little squeals of pain as they kick and push him: five grown men bullying a child. _There is no master, there is no — _The soup turns rancid in his mouth, and instinctively he stands. With his eyes on the old man cowering in the back, Jin says, “Hey, boy. Are you looking for a bodyguard?”

//

After, Jin scolds him. Up close, the boy is somehow smaller — he’s got to be no older than ten. Jin glares as hard as he can manage at the boy’s ruddy brown face, already swelling on one side. His left eye is beginning to show bruising. _His mother should scold him, not me,_ Jin thinks.

“That is not a toy,” he says coldly, gesturing toward the sword on the boy’s hip. “If they had cut you down back there, you wouldn’t have had any right to complain.” He zeroes in on the boy’s face. “If you aren’t prepared to die, don’t swing such things around.”

Unbidden, Jin recalls his own master delivering a similar line to a group of boys around his age: _If you provoke others into anger and they kill you, you have gained your just rewards. So be prepared every time you enter a battle._ Jin had stood silently to the side, covered in bruises from head to toe, feeling nothing at his words. If the master’s intention was to get his students to take combat more seriously, to acknowledge death as a real consequence, it had not mattered to Jin. At ten years old, Jin stood in that dojo and watched the panic flicker across the other boys’ faces and had merely shrugged inside. 

His duty done, Jin now turns on his heel to march away from this moment. He’s already thinking about the next thing, how he should find some lodging before it gets too late. 

“Hey! Don’t make fun of me just ‘cause I’m a kid!” The boy fires at his back. His voice is still strong, proud, despite the pounding he’s just taken. It’s enough that Jin glances over his shoulder.

And there, four foot eight, one hundred pounds, and he’s glaring right back at Jin who towers over him, both brows furrowed and down, as tense as he can force his face. His hands are balled into fists at his side, but his back is straight and his gaze is steady. Jin blinks behind his glasses, readjusting his eyes. That day in the dojo, none of the boys had looked like that when the master told them about death, how they would have deserved to die for their foolishness.

“I- I’m…” he stutters, falters, under Jin’s cool eyes. Valiantly, he blinks tears away and continues, his voice cracking: “I’m the next head of the Kawara gang!”

//

If Jin had to explain later, to anyone, to himself, why he followed the Kawara boy back to their headquarters, why he agreed to go straight into Nagatomi territory, why he _dressed as a prostitute_ to sneak into said Nagatomi territory, he would simply say “Mm” and look away. After all, there is no good reason to point to: the boy is a child too young even to accompany his father to funerals, he’s a crybaby and a weakling, and he was going to get everyone into more trouble than they needed. 

But he did it, and he went quietly, his head empty of thoughts as his feet slid into the dim room where a man sat in a chair, surrounded by other armed men. And Jin’s first thought is that the man in the chair has certainly earned his nickname “The Buddha:” there’s something ethereal, perhaps even cartoonish, about the way he sits in the one shaft of light in the room, his hands at rest, his face entirely blank and peaceful. The only movement is when his hand comes out to quietly tap the ashes out of his pipe.

Then, with a voice warm and raspy with age and smoke, he asks, “Is that the bodyguard I’ve heard about?” His eyes peel open a fraction but they barely glance at Jin. 

“You fool,” the Kawara leader calls his son, who stands with his chin up before him. “Your Big Sis has been taken to the brothel, just a few minutes ago,” he continues, his voice firm but never broaching anger. _Truly a Buddha_ , Jin thinks. 

“An eye for an eye,” he says, with no small amount of exhaustion. “That’s how they do things. That’s why I’ve kept my peace all this time.”

But the room is crackling at the edges; these young yakuza members are frazzled, upset by the power imbalance in their town. They lean in toward their leader, beseeching: Can’t we raid them now? Surely it’s time, surely they deserve it! But the Buddha Heitaro is shaking his head.

“Anger only gives rise to further anger,” he cautions. “It’s a cycle that never ends.”

If the young men are crackling, the boy is boiling. His skinny shoulders shake, and though he’s fallen to his knees during his father’s lesson, he looks up now, and his voice fills the room in a way his elder’s did not. 

“You’re always like this! You only want to keep your hands clean!”

Jin stands in the back, watching the family drama unfold. The boy has been chafing under his father’s peaceful reign, but The Buddha was anticipating this outburst, so he sits quietly and listens as his son disrespects him before his gang. His face doesn’t change once, doesn’t acknowledge his son’s outburst. It’s as if the entire world, and its troubles, is beneath him. _Truly a Buddha_ , Jin thinks again. _Up in the clouds, above it all_. He starts to move toward the door. _There is no master here —_

But the boy is standing, turning toward him. “Let’s go!” he cries. “If the Kawara gang won’t hire you as a bodyguard, then I will!” 

He doesn’t wait for Jin to answer or follow; he’s out the door, into the light, shouting his intentions to the sky. 

The Buddha finally moves. “Sousuke!” he calls after his son. “I forbid it! Sousuke!” 

His eyes are wide open this time; they fall on Jin’s face from across the room. Jin reminds himself, breathing carefully, _There is no master here_ , but his feet begin to move, and he acquiesces to the father’s silent plea, to the son’s direct order. It’s not a master, it’s not a cause worthy enough to follow; hell, it’s not even a good way to make money. But it’s something. It's small and silly and it cries easily, but it's something for Jin to follow today.

Again, he thinks of Fuu, ditched on some road outside of town. He'd chosen to follow her once, back then after a coin toss. Has he traded up, or merely been waylaid? He's sure, somehow in a corner of his mind, that she'll turn up again. She'll march in and remind him in that strange, powerful way she shares with the Kawara boy: _You promised me! You'll help me!_ And he won't be able to argue, _There is no master here_. 


	4. TRACK 04. EARFQUAKE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For "Hellhounds for Hire" part 2 - "EARFQUAKE" by Tyler, the Creator. Had to get in some Fuugen, friends. Had to.

_'Cause you make my earth quake_

_I don't want no confrontation, no_

_You don't want my conversation (I don't want no conversation)_

_I just need some confirmation on how you feel, for real (for real)_

He’s a mile outside town when he turns back for her, swearing all the way. 

_Little bitch_ , he growls under his breath, even as his feet race faster and faster. _Stupid fucking brat, I’ll make you give me two hundred dumplings for this_. 

It’s pouring outside, and it gives him headaches and a sour mood; Mugen’s always hated the rain and the thunder, the way the change in air pressure makes his old scars ache. They throb dully across his back and in his knees, but still he moves faster, faster, the image of Fuu all tarted up for some john behind bars driving him on. 

_A bad look though_ , he sneers, Fuu in a courtesan’s robes. She has none of the seduction, none of the coyness, that it takes to be a good courtesan. She’s all shoulders and ankles and eyebrows, too much expression for such a little face, too much mouth for such a brat.

Gripping the bars of her cage, she’d leaned in so her face was almost between his blade and Jin’s. _What are you two doing?_ She’d hollered over the din. _Are you crazy? What did I say about fighting?_ Her face all screwed up tight, a vein visibly throbbing in her temple; it made him laugh just to recall it. She was itching to grab them both by the collars, smack them around a little. 

She’s been refereeing their fights for weeks now, on this journey. Over the last several days, Mugen and Jin swiped at each other with dark looks and venom in their eyes. It was mostly posturing on Mugen’s part, testing and tauting, trying to see how long it took Four-Eyes to pull his weapon. At least some of it was the sun and the hunger, and the fact that Mugen could tell it was going to rain soon and that meant headaches were coming. But still — each time Fuu was there, a pink flash between two silver streaks of light. She grumbled and grabbed their sleeves, pouting, _What’s up with you guys?_

And there’s something about the light in her eyes, the quirk of her lips. Mugen can’t put his finger on it, neither does he venture to. Mugen bitches and complains about “women getting in the way,” but he puts away his sword over and over again. 

Yeah, Mugen would make her pay him back double for all his trouble, he thinks, as the shitty little town comes back into view. It’s all gray and slosh in the rain, streets blurry and lights foggy. It’s humid and sticky in the palms of his hands, but he’s still thinking about Fuu under the red lamps of the brothel, how her normally flush, alive skin looked pale and sallow, how her hair was pulled in all the wrong directions, how the makeup artist had been a bit too hasty with her lipstick. She must have kicked and screamed the whole time, he muses, still grinning despite himself. A fighter she is, his brat, a fighter all the way through.

He closes in quickly on the red light district, and by the time he cuts through the sorry excuse for a guard, he’s soaked to the bone and madder than a wet hen. He doesn’t even glance at the merchandise when he demands of the women, “Where’s the girl?” 

He scans the room. There’s a dozen young women in here, but none of them have that thing in their face, in their lips and eyes, that _something_ that makes Mugen put his sword away even though his favorite thing in the world is to swing it around. She’s not here, he sees, and somewhere something splits and breaks off inside him.

A woman with a long sad face, says, “She escaped,” and Mugen is instantly so furious he spits.

“That little idiot!”

 _Typical fucking bullshit_ , he swears again, leaving the brothel. _Leave it to the brat to mess up my rescue. Three hundred dumplings!_

//

The next time he sees her, he’s covered more in blood than rain water, and it suits him just fine. Mugen stomps through the men in the gambling house, his metal geta on his calloused feet; he cracks a man’s nose with the thick sole as he lands in the room, glancing around. 

Jin says, dumbfounded, “Why are you…?” 

There — she’s sitting at the perimeter, dressed in the costume of a dice roller with half her kimono off, showing a long white arm and a deep collarbone. She looks smaller and younger half naked like this, but Fuu blinks back at him like _he’s_ the one out of place. It’s enough to make him grimace; how could anyone look at this slim, wholesome girl and think she’s a dice roller, a _courtesan_? Look at those brown eyes, the guileless smile? See those small delicate ears, the lips unaccustomed to paint—? The thought is ridiculous, more than he can bear, it’s laughable, absurd, and so Mugen whips around the room, swinging his sword again, his bad mood dissipating. 

“No one was coming after me,” he says now, “so I came back for you.” 

_You’re gonna give me way more than three hundred dumplings, I’ll tell ya._


	5. TRACK 05. SO MANY DETAILS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sitting on this concept for a little while, so here's TRACK 05., "So Many Details" by Toro Y Moi for Episode 5, "Artistic Anarchy." Having such fun! I look forward to working through this series all day when I'm supposed to be working.

_There’s no one else around_

_I just wanna tease your eyes_

There’s a girl who glances back over her shoulder and stops his heart, but that’s not why Moronobu remembers her. Beauty like that really is more common than it seems; it’s easy for an observant man to lose his breath a couple times a day. Between courtesans, shopkeeper girls, and just your average passerby, he has an eyeful, and he’s not shy about looking. 

No, the reason he remembers her, months and even years later, is for the way her eyes look when they gaze at his sunflower painting. She steps forward, tentatively, her hand coming up to touch it but not daring. Her eyes — big and brown, with just a dash of honey; how they widen and gobble up every last pinch of paint. 

“Sunflowers,” she murmurs, so softly he knows she isn’t aware of it. 

Yes, that’s what he thinks of when he recalls the Backwards Beauty — not the way she’d stood with the window at her back and a halo of sunlight, but the instant fascination, the wonder, of her eyes gazing at sunflowers. Moronobu lies awake at night and tries to conjure it up in dreams. He tries to capture it over and over again in paint, the way the gold reflects itself back across her cheeks in that moment. She glows, that girl. She glows from ear to ear, a child touched by the sun, a flower turned toward the light. 

//

It’s a miracle that she agrees to come back and model for him, though he thinks with some humor that feeding her to the gills with grilled fish has something to do with it. How he still dreams of that night, the dim light of the lanterns, the smell of fresh parchment and paints _—_ and her, chin pointing demurely to the floor and the kind of neck that his hands could paint for hours without boredom. He doesn’t have the painting anymore, to his great misfortune, but he remembers mixing and mixing and mixing his tones together to find the perfect, most accurate shade of blush for her cheeks. Not quite peach, not quite cherry. Warm, but not metallic. Earthy. Even a bit dewy. A whole garden in just that sliver of her face. Poor girl, standing patiently by, watching him mix and dump tones over and over. Perhaps too shy, too out of her element to ask.

It makes it all the more painful when the men slide the doors open; she rounds on him, and her voice shatters against his ears.

“You tricked me, didn’t you?”

He can only hang his head, his stomach sinking, the lowest of the low. He feels sorry for himself, and he lets his face show it. “Please understand,” he murmurs. “This is part of my job too.”

But instead of pleading, she slaps him hard enough to bruise, hard enough to ring his ears. Moronobu sits back in shock, wide-eyed, tears stinging his eyes. No woman had ever touched him like that before, and her face closes in a fierce scowl, the garden turned feral. She is wicked and sweet, an angry sprite.

“How many,” she gasps, “how many girls have you tricked?” Her anger is righteous, a tree calling for thunder.

//

It’s not enough, his one valiant act. They’re caught, and Moronobu is sent home, coughing and spluttering, missing two fingernails on his left hand. _So much for being a hero_ , he thinks fleetingly, before he notices a shadow fall over him.

A scruffy man crouches low by his head. He’s come looking for her, he says. He is sharp and skinny as a blade, a vicious scar across his brow. But that hair, at curious odds with the rest of him which is so spare; hair like a ferocious storm atop his head, an entire hurricane and its winds. Moronobu can’t look away: he sees a storm’s power in this man’s lanky body. He wants to study it and capture its energy, but there’s no time — the scruffy guy barks orders, about the girl with the eyes full of sunflowers. Where is she?

And Moronobu considers, for the first time, that young girls are not all there for him to admire. Some of them are essential — the left lung, the right eye, the spine and the breath. He peers closely at this scruffy man. Despite the sword in his hand, there is a vacancy in his posture, like he doesn’t know which way to lean, which way to look.

Then, on metal-tipped geta — _fascinating, fascinating_ , Moronobu thinks, like a hero from a folktale — the man takes off down the street, growling, “Y’better move, loverboy!”

//

 _What’s her name?_ He wrestles with it on his tongue. He’s never had a good memory, and he’s not a good listener. One syllable; he thinks he recalls hearing it shouted by the scruffy guy, one blunt note in the air. He chases thugs all over town going after her, up streets and through narrow alleys, his body bent forward, shoulders square and set. He beats up a storm of dust with the power of his stride. Moronobu stands back and watches, again, this drama at once public and private. How much this scruffy man gives away, running through the streets after a young woman like this — 

Later, she's standing on the bridge at sunset, the wind touching her hair just so. Her kimono pulled back up over her shoulder. Standing in the river looking up, he misses the view. F— what was her _name_? He doesn’t use it even then, at the moment he says good-bye. He just calls her Backwards Beauty. When she turns over her shoulder, he sees the scruffy man behind her, a blank space on the page naturally filled. His heart stops again and never restarts. 


	6. TRACK 06. TAKE A FALL FOR ME

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, this one was tough for me to write. The episode with the Dutch guy isn't my favorite, but I thought the theme of foreignness in early modern Japan is interesting, considering Mugen's roots. I am not an expert on Japanese history, or especially the delicate relationship with minority groups in the country, but I wanted to have some of that complexity come through in Mugen's character. Not sure if I succeeded. Still, I hope you will tolerate my efforts.
> 
> TRACK 06. "Take a Fall for Me," by James Blake and RZA for Episode 6, "Stranger Searching."

_Don't turn away from me_

_What will become of me?_

_If I can't show my love to thee, there'll be none of me_

On the road to Nagasaki, Mugen begins to leak small things. Fuu asks him about the design of his sword, and surprisingly he actually answers. Later on, he talks wistfully of a particular fish he ate growing up, how the kids on the island used to spend all afternoon in the sun and the water, catching fish with their bare hands. At night, they had sunburns bad enough to cry, but they grilled the fish on spits over the fire and tore in with their teeth; he bragged, it didn’t need soy sauce or anything, just good fire, salt, and the satisfaction of a kill. 

And Jin catches him once, early in the morning before Fuu is awake, trying to comb his hands through his riot of hair; he pulls it this way and that in the style of a topknot, grunting when it refuses to lay down. Jin looks away before Mugen realizes he’s watching. 

//

“Wonder what that weird Dutch guy is doing now,” Mugen comments one day, chewing a toothpick. 

They’ve been on the road for three days since Edo, so Jin and Fuu are both surprised to hear him mention the foreigner. 

“He’s meeting the shogun,” Jin offers.

“Heh.” He grunts, then a few minutes later picks the subject back up. “Think he’s still speaking that shitty Japanese?”

Fuu laughs, bonks him on the shoulder playfully. “What, worse than yours?”

“Hey!” he spits, “My Japanese is fine, it’s just the Ryukyuan accent.” He grumbles, “I’d like to see one of you idiots speak three languages.”

“Three?” Jin is immediately surprised; it had never occurred to him that Mugen grew up speaking other languages. 

“Yeah,” he shoots back but won’t elaborate. 

Jin glances up at him; sure, Mugen looks quite different from himself, but it is expressed more in his body language and long drawls, as opposed to particular physical features. It gives him pause to recall that Mugen was born in the deep south, practically a foreign land to Jin, who was raised in Yamato heartland. Fuu, out of the corner of his eye, gives no indication that she sees Mugen as any different from himself.

“Isaac speaks _four_ languages,” Fuu says now, with wonder. She counts on her fingers: “Dutch, Japanese, French, and a little German. I can’t imagine.”

“Too bad his Japanese sounds like he’s got a mouth full of rocks,” Mugen retorts, arms crossed.

“It _sounds_ like you actually liked him,” she teases, peering around his shoulder with a smile. "Didn't you?"

“Nah,” Mugen swats her away. “I just—” he stops abruptly, frowning deeply. Fuu waits, Jin hangs back; but no matter how she taunts him, or even if she pleads nicely, Mugen never finishes his thought.

//

“There’re folks who say I’m an foreigner too, y’know,” Mugen says later, much later, looking away.

He sits by the campfire, knees drawn up to his chest, hunched into himself. It’s protective body language masquerading as casual. He hasn’t mentioned Isaac or their time in Edo once since that conversation on the road, but now, a week later, he leaks again, and this time only Jin is awake to hear it. 

He watches Mugen carefully. “Do you think you’re an foreigner?” he finally asks. 

Mugen is silent for so long that Jin thinks he refuses to answer. Then, he says, “I never thought about it much before I met you two.” There’s a pause, as he’s trying to work through the implication of his own words. “I only know my island, so I can’t say what anybody else thinks.” His voice is curiously low and calm; low tide on a moonless night. “But, it’s not… like Japan. And not just because of the criminals and the…” His voice trails off. “We have our own languages. Languages we spoke before the shogun arrived. Old ladies still use it with the kids, but when the kids grow up they forget most of the words.” Mugen holds out his arm and shows off his brown skin in the firelight. “And we’re a dark people, not like you fat white mainlanders.” There’s a hint of pride in his voice, but just a hint. “And we’re better sailors and tougher fighters,” he adds with bite, a challenge to Jin’s pride as a samurai. 

But the other man just sits and listens numbly, trying to piece together the bits of Mugen’s identity that he reveals. It’s like the shifting sands on a beach; sometimes the sea brings up treasures from the deep, beautiful golden fish and bright green plants and pink seashells, but other times it wipes away sandcastles you’ve built by hand. 

“The girls on the island are different too,” Mugen says a bit disjointedly, but with a roguish smile. “Sexier, they know what they want.” 

Then he glances at Fuu, asleep nearby. From where they sit, all they can see of her is the outline of her slim body in the darkness, the fire flickering off her pink kimono, sunsets making and remaking themselves. Jin wonders what he’s thinking that causes him to look that way at her, but he doesn’t dare ask. 

“I’m not like you and her,” Mugen finally concludes, looking neither at Jin or at Fuu. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m from Ryukyu or not, but we’re different.” Now Mugen turns hard eyes on Jin; the fire turning cold in his gaze. Distance swells between them, and whatever Jin thought he might say dies on his tongue. “So after we find this sunflower guy,” Mugen continues, eyes glinting, earrings swinging, “it’s not like we’ll be buddy-buddy.”

It’s an absurd comment to Jin, who had never imagined being “buddy-buddy” with Mugen in the first place. Most days with him, Jin narrowly escapes getting his throat cut, or starving to death because he’s spent all their coin on food and whores. When he’s not trying to challenge Jin behind Fuu’s back, Mugen’s ignoring him completely. But, still: Jin thinks on the silent understanding that has grown between them, the way Mugen’s eyes instantly find Fuu’s and Jin’s in the midst of danger. How he and Mugen turn over their cash to Fuu’s hand after a hard day’s work. How when they’re on the road, Mugen fishes for the three of them while Jin and Fuu collect firewood for camp. They don’t argue about these responsibilities; rather, it has slipped in effortlessly, over time, even though every other moment between them is chaos. If there isn’t love or intimacy here, there is at least—

“No.” 

Both men look up, startled, at the soft syllable: a puff of warm air in the cold. They see Fuu stir; how long has she been awake? Fuu sighs and sits up from her bedroll, looking pale. Her kimono gapes a little at the top, like she’s shrunk in her sleep, and her hair is messy, threatening to spill from its perch on the top of her head. The fire casts light into her eyes like mirrors; her cheeks are pink and wet. 

Mugen feigns grumpiness: “Jeez woman, you scared the shit outta me, I swear—”

But she’s shaking her head slowly, her eyes on him, and he quiets. “Please don’t say things like that,” she says now, very simple and quiet. 

A beat, then Mugen’s face closes. “Girlie, we _are_ different,” he repeats. Jin raises his hands in a calming gesture, but he goes on, ice seeping into his voice. “I don’t care if you want things to be different, but I’m Ryukyuan and you’re—”

“We’re _friends_ ,” Fuu cuts in. “We are.”

“Tch.” Mugen gets to his feet and turns away into the trees. “A Ryukyuan pirate, friends with a teahouse brat and a samurai?” The bitterness in his words is raw, chalky in their ears. “Gimme a break.” He stalks off into the dark, his metal geta clomping menacingly. 

Jin watches Fuu pull her knees up to her chest, in the same position Mugen had been sitting in moments before. She looks just as small, young, and frightened. “Jin,” she says now, not looking at him, “I think of you as my friend. I hope you know.” Her voice is trembling, like she’s revealing a closely held secret. 

Jin nods and leans a little closer in her direction. “I know we are friends, Fuu,” he agrees. 

Her eyes flicker to him in the next moment, bright and so starved and grateful that he feels a pang of fear. What has he just agreed to? But Fuu just heaves another sigh and glances in the direction Mugen went. 

“I wonder when he’ll finally admit it too,” she says, equal parts melancholy and amused. 

At that, Jin actually snorts to stop himself laughing. He knows Mugen hasn’t gone far; he’s waiting just inside the cover of the foliage for them to go to sleep before he sneaks back into camp. “Probably not till he’s dead or dying,” he finally answers. 

//

But in the morning, Mugen has fish on the fire before either of them are awake. Squatting by the river, flexing his toes in the dirt, he turns the fish slowly on the pit with a practiced air. Fuu and Jin step close by but don’t disturb him. Wordlessly, he hands each of them a fish, and they discover he was right: no need for soy sauce—just salt, heat, and the satisfaction of a kill. 


	7. TRACK 07. HARDEST TO LOVE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRACK 07. HARDEST TO LOVE, by The Weeknd, for episode 7, "A Risky Racket." Yet another sad one where Fuu's friend dies, this time the young pickpocket.

_But I've been the hardest to love_

_You're tryna let me go, yeah_

_And I can see it, I can see it_

One quick jab of a blade through someone’s middle _—_ they fall. Suddenly there’s a body in the street, not a person. 

Mugen has to drag Fuu away kicking and screaming. She can’t pull enough air into her lungs, so she just keeps crying, “ _No— no, no—_ ” over and over, till Mugen thinks his ears might actually bleed. He growls under his breath, “Stop wriggling you little brat,” one arm wrapped firmly around her middle, hauling her like a sack of rice, while the other deftly bats away cops. Still Fuu pushes at his shoulders, slaps his arms, flails from neck to ankles, her little sandals flung away and forgotten. 

Mugen never drops her. Finally she just presses the palms of her hands to her eyes and weeps. 

Jin meets them on a quiet street not far away. It’s nearly dark outside and Mugen wants to use the lack of light to their advantage to flee, but Jin casts one glance at Fuu, now limp in Mugen’s arms. He’s got her on her own feet, but she’s hardly there, throat raw from screaming, eyes big and blank. If not for Mugen’s protective arm around her shoulders, she might collapse. 

Jin and Mugen meet eyes. Mugen swears again, “The shit we do for this broad.”

//

They sneak back to the alley. The crowds have mostly dispersed, but there are cops everywhere, surveying the scene, taping off the area around the body. Mugen has passed Fuu off to Jin while he snaps a few necks to give them privacy. Fuu’s eyes flutter at the noise, and she looks to Jin in question. He presses a finger to his lips; then carefully, his hands on hers, Jin steers her toward the boy. 

He has not been moved yet, but his blood is dry in the dirt. Both men look away as Fuu sinks to her feet. She pulls his head in her lap, her hands ghosting over his skull, cradling a memory: a shifty-eyed boy with more purpose than meanness in his glare; in better days he might have been called gentle, and in healthier days he might have been called a mother’s boy. Fuu thinks of the sick woman in a hut on a hill. Her pale, clammy forehead, the dark circles under her eyes; it’s a familiar sight, the way sickness changes a mother’s face. “Has he told you anything… new lately?” she’d asked, trying to sound casual, light, in the dim room. No laugh lines here; only fear. “Now he’s doing what boys his age do,” she’d conceded in the end. Fuu doesn’t know what boys his age do, but she does know it isn’t this: powder in your sleeve, a knife in your hand, tightness around the mouth. _What do boys your age do?_

Mugen and Jin manage to buy her three minutes before the cops catch on. Then Mugen hisses, “Girlie, we gotta move—say your good-byes,” and Fuu nods numbly. She gently moves his head back to the ground and stands, brushing the dirt off her clothes. Mugen comes up behind her, prepared to haul her off again; she turns into his shoulder, saying, “His name was Shinsuke,” before the world goes back.

//

They linger in the town for days, despite the fact that the police are looking for them. At night, the trio stays in the shed by the road, buried under hay. By day, Fuu hides behind a tree near the hut where Shinsuke’s mother lives, unable to come into view. She watches the house constantly, but never moves closer or further away. For the first day, Jin hides with her, a shadow at her side. She’s still barefoot, toes flexing in the grass anxiously. Jin eyes the dirty soles of her feet, but otherwise says nothing until the afternoon comes and she’s still not moved.

“Fuu.”

It’s just her name, but after hours of silence, it’s enough to raise her eyes to his in understanding. 

“I need just a little more time,” she answers. She’s still staring at the hut. “To think of what to say.”

At that, Jin nods but doesn’t push her. That night Mugen brings fish from the river and fresh water from upstream, and some of the color begins to come back into Fuu’s face. No one talks, but Mugen seems to snore extra loud to fill up the silence. 

The next day Fuu goes alone to hide behind the tree, and Jin and Mugen don’t bother her or ask questions. She wrings her hands and passes them again over that memory of his mother’s face, sick and sad; of the shock in his eyes as the knife sank in; of the room where a woman once lay in a bed far, far away. Her memories glow bright green; there’s no hiding from the bright light or the truth in the bed. Fuu paces and hides, but the light never turns off, and the woman stays quiet and still in the bed—just like the boy, just like the ogre on the mountain. The third and fourth day passes the same way, with Fuu alone behind the tree, watching and waiting. She wonders if the police would go to a pickpocket’s house to tell his mother that they’ve killed him. As the days go by, it begins to sink in that they never will. 

She returns to the shed later and later in the night, long past dinner time and Mugen’s eaten all the leftover fish. Fuu collapses into the hay, rolling her sore ankles. A moment later, Mugen steps inside, fresh from a night bath in the river, and Jin exits to take his turn. He’s a long, lean shadow moving in the dark, shaking out the water from his hair. He moves to his sleeping quarters, a particularly well-packed bundle of hay, and roots around for something in the mess. 

“Are we going to leave this town before the cops find us?” he asks, gruffly. 

Fuu flinches at his voice, not having spoken to him in days. “Yes.” Her voice is faint, not a promise.

Mugen sighs, “Girlie—”

“Are you going to tell me not to be a puddle again?” she asks, her voice devoid of humor. She’s still not looking at him, but her tone is more sad than bitter. 

A cry rips from Fuu’s throat, and the sobbing begins again. Mugen doesn’t stop her, and he doesn’t come to her and wrap his arms around her shivering body. Instead he holds his arm out, and Fuu notices that he’s holding her little clumsy sandals in his hand, the ones she’d lost in town, and it’s so jarring that her eyes actually dry, and she just stares. But Mugen’s face in the dark is totally obscured. All Fuu can see is the outline of his lips moving in profile. He says quietly, “I found them in the street.” Then Mugen pushes the sandals into her hands and tucks himself into the bed of hay. In a moment, he’s snoring loudly. 

//

On the fifth day, Fuu wakes up early and goes to the river to wash her feet. She scrubs and scrubs until the black, caked-on dirt finally peels away and her feet are once again pink and soft. She takes a deep breath and pulls on her sandals, then steps up to the hut on the hill.

Mugen and Jin wait behind the tree for her to come back. 


	8. TRACK 08. ELECTRIC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad I circled back to this collection this weekend!! It's tough to get time to pursue my personal projects and hobbies these days, but I really want to do all 26 chapters. Fingers crossed.
> 
> TRACK 08, "Electric," by Alina Baraz and Khalid, for episode 8, "The Art of Altercation."

_Darker than the ocean, deeper than the sea,_

_You got everything I want, what I need_

_Touch me, you’re electric, babe_

In their first few hours in Edo, Jin and Mugen manage to ditch her for some sexy broad. Fuu fumes as she marches down the street, muttering “those no-good bozos,” under her breath, but she can’t quite put shape to her immense humiliation. She’s not sure if her feelings are hurt, or if she’s just frightened to be alone in the big city. Either way, she’s moving purposefully toward the bridge, seeking out that brash samurai who’d made a pass at her in the restaurant. By this point in their journey, Fuu is so starved for compliments that she’d considered his advances a touch flattering, but the sweetness of that feeling melted entirely away once Mugen started chatting with the woman calling herself Grape Fang. 

“My god, it’s so hard being a man with sex appeal,” Mugen sighed, levelling Fuu with a shiteating grin before racing out the door with Jin in tow.

 _Well two can play at that game_ , Fuu grimaces as she nears the crowd.

//

The man — he calls himself Nagamitsu — invites her to Roppongi Hills at night. He is tall, and probably old, and his hairstyle isn’t doing him any favors, but Fuu thinks he looks pretty harmless despite his insistence on being “big,” whatever that means. Fuu sits, folded neatly on the hill to get a good view, while Nagamitsu stands above her with both hands on his sword hilt and monologues to the beat of his posse’s beatboxing. 

“I’m going to live in that house!” he shouts, loud enough for the whole city to hear. He points at Edo Castle, but then glances down at her with a coy smile. His voice softens. “And when I do, will you be the Harem of My Heart?”

Fuu’s not really sure what he means — _what’s a harem anyway? —_ but she listens while he talks, although she can’t entirely control her facial expressions as his rants get more and more asinine. In ten minutes, she’s learned more about this stranger than she’s learned about Jin and Mugen in all their time together. She knows where he’s from (Aki province), how many bowls of egg on rice he eats per day (fifteen, he swears), and how many enemies he’s defeated in the last month (forty, according to his posse). Next he begins recounting the tale of how he tried to defeat Mariya Enshiro, the powerful leader of the Kisarazu Mujushin Kenjutsu School, winner of one thousand victories, only to find he’d been beaten to that accomplishment by someone else. 

“After that, I added a new entry to my autobiography,” Nagamitsu continues soulfully, pointing with his sword. In big, sloppy kanji: _Slay the betrayer of the man of the undefeated legend!_

Fuu sighs, feeling a vein in her temple throb, and just when she’s about to start blocking him out entirely, Nagamitsu says, “I know that this samurai I seek wears glasses, which is rare even in Edo. And this man’s name is—”

“J-J-Jin,” the beatboxer finishes.

The blood drains from her cheeks. “Ah?”

The beatboxer repeats, hands whipping and flourishing, “J-J-Jin.”

Fuu’s head swims. _Jin?_ That gentle young man with the scholar’s face and the poet’s hands? Jin, with his hair tied neatly back, his head lowered in meditation? Jin wanders the countryside with his wide-rimmed hat, protecting humble farmers and their daughters from being molested by local magistrates. Jin doesn’t prowl in dark rooms, waiting for his chance to strike. Jin doesn’t have a teacher’s corpse at his feet; it’s a stranger’s face there in Nagamitsu’s story of Mariya Enshiro’s demise. 

But coldness seeps into her bones, like she’s slowly sinking underwater. 

//

In the morning, the men covered in sweat and vomit by her door do not resemble the men she came into town with. They’re pale, haggard, and broker than usual, and Fuu’s so furious she can barely speak to them. Still, it gives her no small satisfaction to learn that the Grape Fang lured them out only to rob them blind. 

But Fuu peers up more carefully at Jin’s face, which is blurry from lack of sleep and squinting hard without his glasses. He looks puckered and dry, irritable but not dangerous. She tries to find some relief in this image, but her relief still smells sour, a backwashed betrayal. 

At her side, Mugen groans and rubs his head; Fuu motions to him and he leans down. “Has Jin ever told you anything about his past?” she whispers, her hand cupped against his ear. 

Mugen’s eyes narrow, seeing something she hadn’t intended. He makes a sound of annoyance and jerks his thumb in Jin’s direction. “Why don’t you ask _him_?” 

//

It is an impossible request, to talk to Jin. In all their time together, Fuu has never been able to coax more than a few sentences at a time out of the man, and nothing remotely as personal as this. Mugen reveals things about himself by accident, but Jin is tightly wound, a bottle stoppered shut. She has no idea how to force the lid off, or what its contents might taste like. So Fuu decides to believe, emphatically, that Jin is not the kind of person who would kill his teacher, and even if, even if he did — she can’t finish the thought. It’s Jin’s story, not hers. She shuts the lid firmly. It’s not hers.

But the bottle is broken. Smashed to pieces, its jagged edges grinning like savage teeth. In broad daylight, on the streets of Edo, a man she’s never seen before calls Jin a murderer and swears to avenge Mariya Enshiro. Fuu watches at the sidelines, waiting, her hands clutching at Mugen’s sleeve. _Say he’s wrong,_ _Jin_ , she wills. _Say—_

But Jin says nothing of the sort. First, “Let’s step outside.” Then, with his graceful hand on the hilt of his sword, he declares in a voice solemn and still: “I was not the one who betrayed him. In any case, the fact of the matter is that I am the one who killed him.” 

And then Jin’s posture pulls forward, shifts into another plane entirely, becomes focused and sharp as a blade. He’s more weapon than flesh in that moment.

Fuu’s seen Jin scuffle with Mugen countless times, but this—? She blinks, there’s a flicker, Jin’s body disappears and reappears several yards away. His sword is drawn, his body taut. He doesn’t have a hair out of place, nor a bead of sweat on his cool pale brow. He is the picture of a still but deep pond, waters too murky to comprehend. 

The breath rushes from her lungs like she’s suddenly plunged under, and Fuu feels ferociously out of her depth. _When were you going to tell us?_ She wonders. _When were you —_ and she could kick herself, for being so stupid, so naive. How could she have gone unknowingly so many months with a man who could wield a sword like that? Slicing pears blindfolded is nothing, a party trick. She thinks of all the times Jin’s sword stayed still in its scabbard when he could have used it. _It is not an axe, or a knife_ , he reminded her patiently. _It is the soul of a samurai._

Next to her, Mugen is quivering from head to toe, a grin pulling at his lips. He’s itching to join, to throw his body in the way, and Fuu takes a step away from him too. How could they suddenly be strangers to her? And this — this is the difference between honed fighters like Jin and Mugen and soft teahouse waitresses like Fuu: she doesn’t have the lightning in her step, the ability to multiply herself, branching off in any direction, assessing, anticipating, acting without restraint or fear. It’s the roar of fate, the way Jin and Mugen move when they mean it. Decisive. Lethal. It’s nothing like Fuu’s clumsy steps, tripping and falling constantly, needing to be helped back up. Still, she thinks she might have known an inkling of this power on that first day: standing on the roof of a government building, three men’s height in the air with bombs in her hands, she’d never been so exhilarated — _Is this what it means, to go on an adventure?_ And with that taste on her tongue, she lit the city on fire.

It was that quick, a decision to throw two bombs into a crowd, just as Jin’s to pull his sword from its sheath. If Fuu had blinked, she might have missed it, but she doesn’t: Jin flexes his hands, watches the man race toward him, then neatly steps forward and knocks him off balance. The next moment, he is on his back with the tip of Jin’s blade in his face. 

“I will let you live today,” Jin says quietly. “Tell the others that they can come. I’ve made my peace with it.”

And that’s another decision Jin makes, so swiftly that it pulls the breath from her lungs again. In the space of two heartbeats, Jin becomes the man who murdered his teacher but also the man who lets the avenger live. He sheathes his sword without another glance backward, and the next moment his eyes land on Fuu. She’s not sure what she sees there: Jin’s face is still a silent pond. But it’s some comfort that his next step is in her direction. 


	9. TRACK 09. GLOWED UP

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, tried some humor here?? Idk, unsure that I pulled it off - but I thought it was about time to try something new, and what better occasion than for Ep 9, "Beatbox Bandits"? TRACK 09, "GLOWED UP," by KAYTRANADA and Anderson. Paak.

_Gone are all my worries, I'm looney, absolutely out my dome_

_Stackin' my capital, while carving my legacy_

_Now tell me, is you with me, with me, with me?_

The field is on fire. 

Mugen blinks, takes a deep pull from the air into his lungs. It smells — _purple_ , somehow; herbal, but still spicy, like brewing tea and liquor together. His head lolls a bit and he forces it back up, takes another deep drag. Fire crackles up his nostrils and down his spine, like someone’s set him aflame. He feels warmth in the pit of his belly, a tingle in his fingers.

The land around him tips sideways, rears up into a curve like the whole world is a hill, and Mugen is entranced. Is that the sun there yonder, turning blue, the sky turning ochre? He thinks of Fuu’s sunflowers, the way she spreads her fingers out when she describes how _big_ and _yellow_ and _soft_ the petals are, and the warmth spreads. 

But a Tengu is screaming at him; his voice arches thinner and higher: “You destroyed our holy grass!”

 _Pfft, grass isn’t holy_ , he wants to scoff, _but sunflowers might be. Anything with petals so big and wide, like she said —_ His ears are ringing, and he actually _giggles_ when he’s never giggled, not once, in his damn life. He actually has to clutch his belly to stop the shaking. 

Mugen watches in fascination, as the Tengu raises his weapon; it all happens in slow motion, like he’s dreaming it backwards. He’s always hard sharp eyes, but this is something new, something unreal, and even through the haze of smoke and fire he knows it’s in his head somehow. Can a fire burn in your brains, your lungs? 

He greedily snaps up more air and when he exhales he feels like his skin is melting off. Mugen’s never really wanted to cast off his body before, but it’s pleasant, like being weightless. Has he ascended, and he just doesn’t know it? He’s all teeth and hair and fire — he thinks he sees the stars even though the sun hasn’t set yet, there’s definitely something bright up there, shining and falling, shining and falling, and maybe that’s Venus, or whatever they used to call it on the island, he never really listened to the old man’s stories anyway. Once Jin had pointed it out through the trees on a particularly clear night, and he gave it some fancy name, but Mugen can’t remember the words, his tongue feels too thick and heavy in his mouth. Let Four-Eyes remember that stuff, Mugen has better things to do anyway. 

Mugen charges, but it’s more like flying — he’s lighter than air and faster than a bird, and when he shoots through the sky he aims for the Tengu. But his grip on the sword is sloppy. He has to squint through the smoke, and his eyes start to tear. Why are they fighting again?

The earth seems to give under his feet. The Tengu’s face swims in his vision, and his mouth twists in the wrong direction. Suddenly he’s not grimacing, but smiling, or laughing? The Tengu reaches out with an empty hand.

/

When Mugen comes to, it’s with Fuu’s fist connecting to his jaw. 

“Stupid jerk, scumbag, idiot, bozo,” she calls him every name she can think of, trembling from head to toe. He looks up at her face set against the bright blue sky, clear of purple smoke; she’s flushed and frowning so deeply it has to hurt. It pulls a laugh from his throat, and she frowns even deeper, so he laughs again despite his raw, raw throat. 

Over her shoulder, Mugen sees Jin’s face, twisted into an expression of ice-hot fury. He knows he’s better off facing Fuu’s rage.

He breathes in short, staggering breathes, coughing and spluttering, but she doesn’t let him go, and she doesn’t stop the barrage of insults. She shakes him for good measure, and he stays limp in her grip. “Asshole, moron — I can’t _believe_ you!” Mugen nods along to her ranting, lets her strangle him in her grip.

Finally he says, dreamily, "You gotta show me those sunflowers sometime." 

At that, Fuu blinks, so taken aback she drops him.

/

“What I wanna know,” she says for perhaps the hundredth time, “is why you were _kissing_ him when we found you.”

Jin coughs to hide his grunt of laughter, but Mugen shoves more food into his mouth. “You’re makin’ that up, girlie, I got no memory of that.”

Fuu and Jin exchange glances, which they’ve been doing more and more often since the “Summer of Love” incident (dubbed by that weird little official with the glasses; he couldn’t stop romanticizing it). True, Mugen has essentially no memory of that day and night (nor, to be completely fair, of the few days leading up to the incident either; Jin thinks it's been "burned right out of his tiny brain"). True, when they'd found him, he was surrounded by the weird priests wearing Tengu masks, and they'd been... friendly. He doesn't recall a fight, and he doesn't find any bruises or slashes on his skin in the days after. There might have been some singing and dancing. Light petting. Who knows.

But it’s been nearly three weeks, and whenever Mugen thinks she’s forgotten about the Hakone Checkpoint and hers and Jin’s near-execution, she brings it up again with a sly smile and a meaningful glance at Jin. Now, in a teahouse several miles from Edo, over their first meal in two days, she wants to start it up again. Around them, the teahouse is full of patrons. They pay them no mind, though when they’d first entered, a couple families took in Mugen’s tattoos and earrings, hurriedly paid, and scampered away.

Fuu looks more and more smug by the minute, and Mugen wants nothing more than to smack that grin off her pie face. He glares over his bowl but never stops eating and making noises to drown her out. 

“You see,” Fuu goes on, heedless of the danger, “Jin and I had to risk our lives and escape with no help from you _whatsoever_ , so we were thinking you had gotten into trouble or something.” 

“Girlie—” Mugen warns, garbling around his food. 

Her hands flutter as she talks. She is still grinning, lips tipped sideways and one eyebrow arched. Mugen’s nostrils flare. “Or, at least, perhaps you had a really good _reason_ for being delayed—” Jin coughs again.

This time Mugen slams his bowl on the table, and it shatters in his hands. The small teahouse goes silent, all eyes trained on them. Mugen leans over the table and grabs Fuu by the collar of her pink kimono, ignoring the blood on his palms. She flushes deeply and tries to escape his grip, “What are you doing, Mugen—?” Next to her, Jin blinks in surprise but doesn’t move in time. 

And Mugen angrily slaps his mouth over Fuu’s, then almost immediately shoves her away. Everyone in the teahouse stares, still as statues, as he holds her with his glare and wipes his mouth with the back of his arm.

“There,” he huffs, “now you’ve had my tongue _and_ that asshole Tengu’s tongue in your mouth too. See how you like it, _brat_.” Then Mugen snatches his sword and stalks out the door. A few people yelp and move out of his way.

Fuu, in her, seat sits shell-shocked and white as a sheet, unable to make eye contact with anyone. Slowly, after no one makes another move, the teahouse begins to chatter again, albeit this time much more cautiously, as if preparing to witness more drama. People whisper and point in Fuu’s direction, loudly asking, “Are they in a love triangle?” and “What was he talking about, a Tengu?” 

Jin finally reaches over and pours her a cup of tea from the pot.

“I suppose,” he finally chokes out, “you can’t tell him that it was all a joke now.”


	10. TRACK 10. NEVER CATCH ME

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, so happy I finally had some time to add to this collection again. My life is so crazy right now, but I really want to do all 26 episodes.
> 
> Here's TRACK 10. NEVER CATCH ME, by Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamar, for episode 10, "Lethal Lunacy." Another one focusing on my dear sweet Mugen, with a bit more Fuugen as well.
> 
> Also, many thanks to @Ryukyuan-Sunflower on tumblr for the informative post about kiribi!

_I can see the darkness in me and it’s quite amazing_

_Life and death ain’t no mystery and I wanna taste it_

_Step inside of my mind and you'll find_

_Curiosity, animosity, high philosophy like the prophesied meditation_

This is how Mugen feels most alive: bent over and heaving, every breath jagged as knives, eyes stinging with sweat and blood. His muscles feel tensed and aching, but his sword is tight and agile in his hand. There’s a man before him; Mugen doesn’t know his name, his age, hell even his _reasons_ for fighting — but it doesn’t matter, that stuff never has. What matters is the glint in his eye, the mastery of his form, the power that emits from his person. He grins like a wolf snapping his teeth in a war dance, and Mugen can see that he’s here to kill him. 

And there’s a moment, somewhere just before their swords clash, when Mugen’s not sure if he can ready his weapon in time, if he can match this other man’s strength; could this be it, could this be the moment his body is surrendered to the flames, set adrift? He peers over the ledge and smiles.

_I’m still here._

//

It’s always been this way. Mugen has very few things: the numberless sands on the shore and the moonlight on the sea; the way a woman holds him in the cradle of her thighs; and the fight. Of the three, the fight is the most straightforward and therefore his favorite. There are very few things to think about, but numerous things to feel — the rush of wind on his face as his opponent surges forward, the ground firm or slippery beneath his geta, the crunch of bones breaking in his face, his fingers. He could leap into a fight over a spilt cup of tea, over a saucy look. _What you got in that wallet, there? Something for me?_ He feels cheeky, hungry for the dance. 

After, when the bodies still and the buildings burn, he slinks away, half his normal size, his blood cooling. He wipes himself down in the river and peers over his shoulder: no one is coming after him, to slay him, to arrest him, to put him down for good. 

//

The story repeats itself, repeats itself. Until one day in a teahouse, first a girl with the promise of one hundred dumplings, then a man with the personality of a river trout finally — nearly — kills him for good. Somehow they wind up together, all three of them, a pirate, a disgraced samurai, and a teahouse waitress. No one has ever stayed with Mugen for more than a few days at a time, man or woman. And instead of stealing his wallet and sword and running off into the distance, the brat _insists_ , “You’re going to help me find the sunflower samurai,” and Fish Face stays too. 

The brat is young and silly, but she’s got nerves of steel for someone so soft. She never hesitates to grab him by the collar and shake good sense into him, heedless of the sword on his back, the scars in his face. He calls her “Brat,” and “Bitch,” and instead of tearing up or fleeing this bastard with no sense of decency, she just stares him down, face twisting and twisting. Her brows get so tight and livid he wants to laugh. Getting under her skin becomes fun. What better way to see himself reflected, than in her red, puffed up cheeks or her scrunched up nose? _Gotcha_ , he wags a finger, like he’s pulled one over her. She slaps him, she hollers at him, she fights over food. But Fuu never leaves, and neither does Jin. 

//

In a nowhere town between Edo and Nagasaki, they wind up staying in a monastery. For a few days, life slows down enough for him to doze in corners with a full belly. The old monk bonks him on the head, reminds him to polish the Buddha, chop the fire wood, repair the roof tiles. Mugen endlessly bitches. Fuu throws her hands over his shameful mouth and hisses, “shut _up_ ,” with that same furious little twist on her brow. It’s quiet except for her occasional slaps and the monk’s chimes. He feels like he’s sinking underwater, the hours layering over him slowly and holding him still. He starts noticing small things, like how she tucks her hair behind her ear nervously, or how Fish Face adjusts his glasses when he’s about to say something cutting. Early in the morning, Mugen sees Jin slip away and follows him to the waterfall, where the samurai sits under the water and meditates for forty five minutes before breakfast. He sees that Fuu talks to herself when she thinks she’s alone, calling the air _Mama_ and gesturing. It pinches a place in his lower left ribs, so Mugen slips away for a drink. 

And this is the trouble that starts: that night he meets a swordsman who can command the wind to tear your insides, and Mugen returns to the monastery holding his bleeding hand. She notices. Fuu reaches out with her small slim hands, the same hands that gestured at the air, and takes his wrist, this time her brows not furrowing in rage but in concern, and this, this is the trouble — Mugen can’t _stand_ her face like this, its gentleness, how she touches him softly like he’s someone to be touched softly. Mugen is many things, but he is not soft, and he doesn’t need to be handled with care. He rips his hand away from her grip. 

//

The trouble never stops: Mugen actually _trains_ . Training is not his style, it’s not how he learned to fight on the island, and he doesn’t like discipline. But he runs up the temple steps, carrying heavy loads, hits stationary targets with weapons, even contemplates meditating under the water like Fish Face. The excitement of his upcoming duel under the moon ratchets higher and higher as the days pass; he thinks of the slap of the other man’s sword, the moment that his palms opened and bled. He racks his brains, trying to think through the problem, another method Mugen’s never tried with his fights — usually they just _happen_ , they’re not planned and formalized and prepared for. He crouches in the trees, watching the movements of squirrels, bees, the stillness of the leaves. He grabs fish from the river and tosses them back. On the advice of the monk, he practices his breathing. 

Mugen can feel her eyes, and Jin’s, on him the entire time. They stand far enough away not to interfere, but from the corner of his eye he can see them: Jin’s long dark shadow and the pink blob with her hands clenched in worry. He wants to shout in her face, he wants to shove her face in the dirt, he wants to say something vicious and mean so that she’ll yell back. He doesn’t do any of those things.

//

The night of the duel comes, the moon full and bright like even _she_ has something to say. 

Mugen brushes past Fuu and Jin, “Well, I’m heading out for a bit.” He doesn’t meet their eyes. 

Fuu breathes, not looking at him either. “You haven’t forgotten, right?” Her voice is small, but clear. 

He stops, and that’s the trouble. 

“You’re going to help me find the sunflower samurai, right?” It’s not a question. 

With one eye glaring at her over his shoulder, Mugen grits his teeth. “Yeah, I know.”

“Hey, don’t forget.” Now Fish Face. Seated inside by the candlelight, a book open on his lap. “I will be the one to kill you.”

Before Mugen can make a retort, Fuu reaches out and casts sparks with a _kiribi_ at his back. Her expression is solemn, watching him with stillwater eyes.

He grumbles, “What are you, my wife?” 

But she doesn’t rise to the bait. She looks taller, somehow dignified, with the duel moonlight on her. Her cheekbones glow. Her forehead is smooth as white silk. He huffs. Mugen prefers her upset, puffy, red, snotty-nosed and vengeful. He wonders if that’ll be the last thing he sees before he dies. He grins to himself as he saunters away. _Not a bad way to go._

//

_I’m still here._

Mugen jumps over the ledge, eyes wide open; a powerful wind takes him, knocks him back against the cliff.

Suddenly, the swordsman calls out to him. “Why do you fight me?” he asks, frowning. “Is it because of the bounty on my head?”

There’s blood in Mugen’s mouth, probably a few cracked ribs from falling into the river. His clothes are soaked through and it chills his muscles. Still, his breathing is hot and fast, his chest pulling in more and more, like it’s winding up for a pitch. He drags himself to his feet, wipes the blood off his lip with the back of his hand. How much blood does a human body have? He must’ve bled out a hundred times over in his lifetime already, but he’s still standing. Across the way, the stranger is not in much better shape, but he’s poised to come at him again. 

There’s a tingle in his fingertips, raw excitement coming off him in waves. Is this it? _Is this it? Are these the last few moments before I die?_ The anticipation is intoxicating; he waits and watches for the moment his opponent strikes, the half-step before he bets and loses everything. 

“I’m having the time of my life—!” he shouts, a wide, toothy grin on his lips. 

They charge each other, and the man’s strike is so powerful it forces more blood from his gut. Mugen staggers, his vision goes foggy. He collapses on the riverbed, body so heavy. 

“This time, you’re mine,” the stranger promises darkly, rearing up again. Then he attacks, with enough power to finally lay Mugen down. 

The moment feels slow: the fall from the cliff is far, and below, Mugen sees nothing but darkness, hears nothing but the wind roaring in his ears. Is that what dying is? A long, dark fall? He looks down at his hands, just recently healed from the previous encounter; without his sword they look so empty. He touches his wrist where Fuu had held him very gently with that unfamiliar look in her eyes. _You haven’t forgotten, right?_ Yeah, he definitely prefers when she’s angry and spitting curses at him. 

He pulls the secret short sword from his back; the strange swordsman is nearly upon him. _I’m still here,_ Mugen thinks again, before he strikes.   
  



End file.
